AN: I wanted to dwell on Roy and Riza's road to adoption despite their chosen careers since we've already established what they want to do in the military hehe.

Hope you enjoy!

Shot in the Dark

The newly minted General Roy Mustang curled his toes in his boots and set his lips in a thin line. It hadn't been a month since his recent promotion and he knew it wasn't going to be easy, but this was going too far. Paperwork got lost in his office every day, the responsibility falling on Riza and Falman's shoulders to sort through then asking Breda or Fuery to deliver them to the proper office, while Havoc stayed behind to man the phone and divide the work actually intended for them.

He conceded that it was his fault to some degree because he decided to start working in Central HQ a week earlier than scheduled. However, after a month of this, it was reasonable for one to expect that officers would have adjusted by now.

Falman groaned, and it was drawn out for longer than a second before the man jolted himself to stop since he realized he made the sound out loud.

Breda and Havoc snickered. Usually, it was either of them who sounded off their disapproval at the bureaucratic mess, but today it was Falman who took the award for "first to crack."

Riza leaned back in her seat and rolled her shoulders back. "Take a break, boys. You've earned it."

As one, four chairs scraped against the floor and boots thudded out the room with a click of the door.

Roy sighed as he dropped his pen on his desk, cracking his knuckles to the sound of plastic hitting wood. "I've earned a break too, yes?"

His wife gave him a small smile, her eyes sympathetic to their plight, but work had to take precedence. "Until your next meeting."

/-/

Mrs. Izumi Curtis, the newest State Alchemist, was one of the most down-to-earth people Riza ever encountered. Despite being on duty and in uniform, she found herself fighting down a smile every other moment that Izumi insisted she was a mere "housewife." Not with those shoo-in marks into the Program.

"And my husband likes it too," said Izumi, "so thank you again."

"Please." Roy leaned back on the sofa chair. "If anything, I should be thanking you. You proved my proposal about the State Alchemist Program works." He smiled.

The brunette nodded. "Let's call it even, then. So," she waved a pile of papers in the air, "where do you want these?"

"Ah, thank you." He reached out, but Riza stepped forward and took the papers for him. "I swear I tried to lessen those," he eyed the pile resting in Hawkeye's arm, "but I can only ask for so much change at a time."

The other alchemist laughed, her head thrown back in sheer delight. "I heard rumors about you being a charmer and rumors about you being married. I suppose you being the charmer is the accurate one."

Riza's jaw clenched, her knees locking straighter in her stance from the side of Roy's chair. Just because they didn't have a big wedding with her in a white dress and a multi-tiered cake didn't mean their marriage wasn't real.

"Happily married too, Mrs. Curtis," he said, unconsciously flexing his ringless hand. He and Riza decided to keep their rings with their dog tags tucked underneath their uniforms, the bodyguard in Riza dictating upon them that a blatant sign of weakness like a ring is ill-advised.

"Oh." Her eyebrows shot up. "I'd love to meet her one of these days. I can only imagine how hard it is for her… what with our plans of expanding our family soon."

"Actually…" he twisted in his seat to eye the tense Riza, "you've met."

The Major allowed a small smile to slip through. "And I look forward to meeting the new Curtis child soon."

Izumi blinked at the blonde, then trailed her eyes down to Riza's undeniably empty left hand.

Riza's fingers twitched at the not-so-subtle inquiry. "I'm a weapons expert. A ring might hinder movement," she stated, though the question remained unasked.

"And your name?" inquired Izumi.

Classic alchemist. Unapologetic, no holds barred questioning. "Practicality. We're in the same office. Having two Mustangs will confuse things, despite the difference in ranks." Her eyes strayed momentarily to Roy's then back at the other woman. "But as a civilian, I did choose Riza Mustang." She didn't want to get stuck with her maiden surname anymore than what is necessary.

The desire to not be tied to a label was something Izumi knew well. "Ah, well then," she smiled at the blonde and stood from the couch, "It's great to meet you, Mrs. Mustang." She leaned forward and pressed her cheek against Riza's cheek, then drew back.

When the meeting ended, Roy begrudgingly returned to his desk with Riza laying down Izumi's papers on top of his growing stack of work. A soft hand on his shoulder and a silent sigh was all the indication Riza gave to him before she left the office, her own stack of papers in tow.

Roy raised Izumi's paperwork to his face and started to flip the pages. The woman was good. Too good. Her entry scores into the State Alchemist Program were exceptional, and above average at worst. "Good thing we found her before we transferred here," he murmured to himself. He laid the papers down and signed at the proper area before setting them off to the side.

He picked up the next piece of paper to work from. There was no time to slack off today, not with everyone in his office running ragged as they were already. All he wanted was to go home and sleep. Big, red bold letters greeted him: "FOR ADOPTION TRANSFER"

The General furrowed his brows at the files. It showed the personal information of two boys - Edward and Alphonse Elric - and a request to transfer them from the East to Central Adoption Center. "Falman," he called.

The man stood and approached. "Sir."

He extended his arm, papers in hand about to give them to Falman due to yet another logistical error, when something caught his eye. Blonde hair and dark golden eyes stared at him, and he paused. Pained, annoyed, tired eyes greeted him with a scowl in the face of the young boy.

"Sir?" prodded Falman.

Roy shook his head then brought the papers back on his desk and started to read through it. "False alarm."

"Name: Edward Elric. Age: 10. Father's Name: Van Hohenheim. Father's Occupation: Alchemist. Unknown whereabouts. Mother's Name: Trisha Elric. Mother's Occupation: None. Deceased."

He eyed the photo of the boy again and his chest ached. He blinked and a younger Riza's face flashed in his mind in the place of the boy. He blinked again then the boy's face returned.

He breathed in deep as he flipped to the next page. "Name: Alphonse Elric. Age: 9," with the same parental information his older brother had.

These boys were up for adoption? Alchemist father, dead mother, on top of their physical attributes… His eyes strayed to his wife's empty desk. It was undeniable that the boys reminded him of Riza too much.

/-/

Roy swallowed the lump in his throat, along with the mashed potatoes included in tonight's dinner. He knew he should have asked Falman to redirect the lost paperwork to the proper office, but he couldn't let them go. He slid them in an envelope and hid it in the car compartment, hoping for an opportunity to breach the topic as soon as possible.

"Roy?"

Mentally shaking himself back to the present, his gaze focused on a concerned-looking Riza.

"Are you alright?" She knew work was more than a lot to handle right now, but her husband wasn't the type to bring the worries of it back home.

"Ye…" a glint in the light caught his eye and he followed it down the chain around the blonde's neck, to the silver dog tags and two rings resting near her chest. Pride surged in his chest for a second because at least as a civilian, she chooses to display her rings out in the open. "Do you ever wonder what if?"

"What if… what?" her fingers absently traced the rings, knowing that he was looking at them. If he was having doubts about their marriage, she would tell him to sleep it off and knock him out with the butt of her gun.

He shrugged, thoughts not formulating as well as he hoped. "What if we adopted? Like Mrs. Curtis?"

"There won't be much difference with adopting and bearing. We still have our jobs to consider. If anything goes wrong…" Getting married while in active service in the military, with both of them under the same office getting sent to the same missions, had its set of risks. One wrong move in a mission or in their recruitment efforts for new State Alchemists and both of them could get injured or killed in the snap of a finger. "... poor kid would have to bear it." As morbid as it was, she was glad her only living relative was a grandfather she wasn't emotionally tied to because it lessened the impact should anything happen to her and Roy.

"But what if we could change their lives?"

"Whose?"

"The kids that we'll adopt?"

Where was this coming from? They talked about kids before getting married, and it had been a firm decision not to have any. "The hypothetical adopted kids… what makes them any different than the rest?" she asked. "What gives us the right to choose a specific one or a handful with the others still in the system?"

She tilted her head to the side, assessing her husband, hoping to find the real reason behind this conversation. "If it's about you getting adopted by Madame Christmas and you supporting the cause, you could just rally for better adoption policies, Roy."

"It's not that." He shook his head, his chest filling up with words he wanted to say. He cared for those Elric boys from the moment he read their files. There was a yearning from deep within him that was neither related to Amestris nor Riza that only those two boys could fill. "I found some boys."

She waited for him to elaborate with widened eyes. His words could mean a lot of different things and she was too tired to be imaginative right now.

"Two brothers," he gulped, daring to make eye contact with her, "up for adoption."

She pursed her lips, her head slowly nodding in realization. But she wasn't ready for that. She didn't know if she would ever be ready. She wondered why Roy was suddenly springing this on her. "For… us?"

He sensed her fear and apprehension. "Not if you don't want to," he said quickly, trying to be as assuring as possible, knowing that he was threading a very fine line. "I just… They - they're different."

She felt her brow arch. "Just how many adoption files have you been browsing through the past few days, or the past few weeks?" Is that why their office was under hell with all the messy paperwork? Was it actually attributable to their boss scouring through unnecessary adoption advertisements?

"Just them!" he raised his hands in front of her. "Their file got mixed in on my desk today."

She took a deep breath and knew that if he was bringing this up for discussion, he had already finished listing the benefits and drawbacks of this endeavor in his mind. "Out with it, then… The pros and cons." She'd wait for him to get it out of his system, then devise a scheme to shoot the idea down without hurting him.

"The con is we'll have to empty out a room so that both boys can have a room of their own. The pros are all in their files."

If possible, her already arched brow rose higher. "That's fully biased." Please, no. I'm not ready to be a mother. I will never be ready to be a mother. No one would be able to assure her that she wasn't going to be responsible for messing up these kids' lives.

/-/

The adoption files rested on her lap, spread out just enough that both boys' pictures stared up at her. Roy, like a magician, produced them from nowhere after a week from their initial conversation and handed it to her for her "consideration". She had to admit that even if she placed her husband's early bias aside, she still felt a tug in her heart whenever she eyed the files.

Edward, the elder of the two, had the best grades in his class despite his penchant for getting into fights. Riza knew that the boy was struggling with losing their mother so abruptly. Heaven knew she went through a similar phase when she lost her own mother. Alphonse, on the other hand, also had good grades but what struck Riza most about the younger Elric was his kind disposition despite the tragedy that he's faced. The caretaker had listed a lot of things Alphonse said or gave her during the span of time that the boys have been under her care, and Riza was impressed.

She wanted to meet them.

She sucked in a breath. What was she thinking? Wanting to meet them and wanting to adopt them isn't the same, right?

Riza browsed through the files again, and she realized that whenever she looked over them, she found something endearing about the boys each and every time. She found herself drawn to them, to their story, because it wasn't all that dissimilar to hers with regard to how her parents fared in life.

She found herself wishing them the best in life.

She found herself wanting to do more than just wish.

"Damn it," she muttered under her breath, tears pricking her eyes.

/-/

The sound of the door slamming open had Riza, Breda, and Havoc shoot up from their seats, guns drawn.

Izumi raised her hands in the air, shocked eyes blinking at the sharp contrast the soldiers displayed compared to how warm they welcomed her before. "Uh. Hi?"

"Mrs. Curtis," greeted Roy with a smile from his desk. "Hi." He smiled at her.

"What's going on?" she looked at the three guns still pointed in her direction.

"You spooked them with the door," was Roy's answer.

Riza shook her head before reholstering her weapon, with Breda and Havoc following suit. "Please come in." She gestured for the other woman to enter.

"Sorry about that. Forgot to knock." Izumi rubbed her nape, hesitantly creeping into the office. "I'm stressed about… I wouldn't happen to have misplaced some papers here, would I?"

"What were the files about, ma'am?" asked Falman. If it was wrongly given to their office, he was most likely to remember what it was.

"Uhh… adoption… papers?" she cringed. She only joined the State Alchemist Program when General Mustang changed it in such a way that people like her could remain as civilians, so paperwork was truly not one of her strongpoints.

Roy's eyes widened, his mouth hanging open. The Elric boys were the kids that Izumi and her husband were adopting?

Riza felt her heart sink. Oddly enough, she found herself chanting a whole lot of "No" in her mind.

Mustang cleared his throat. "Yeah, they're here," he murmured begrudgingly, opening his top drawer and pulling the papers out.

Izumi sighed in relief, walking up to Roy and reaching for the files.

"Those are the new Curtis children?" asked Riza, her monotone voice hiding an ache she couldn't quite place.

"Huh? Oh, no." She looked down on the papers then up at Hawkeye. "We're adopting their neighbor, a girl named Winry. Her grandmother died with the same thing these boys' mother had."

"Then…" prodded Roy, his eyebrows scrunching in confusion.

"I'm asking for their transfer to the Central Adoption Center to be closer to me and their friend. We…" she cringed, "tried to adopt the Elrics and Winry together, but since my income as a State Alchemist isn't established, and my husband's meat shop hasn't taken off yet, the system chopped us at being able to adopt three growing children." The alchemist sighed. "Maybe next year? But until then, they wait for an adopter." She wasn't hopeful. With Ed's temper, and the requirement of both boys being adopted together, Izumi was sure they'll still be up for adoption come next year.

Roy cleared his throat, and in his most authoritative voice he said, "Hawkeye. Mrs. Curtis, meeting room. Now." As an afterthought as he glanced at Izumi's face, he added as he stood, "Please."

/-/

Izumi looked at Hawkeye's tense stance behind her husband, who had a similarly tense demeanor in his seat. "Uhh, what's going on?" she asked.

"So those boys…" he turned to spare a glance back at his wife. Riza sighed and subtly nodded her head. Her heart dropping like a 10-ton weight when she thought Izumi was adopting those boys was enough to convince her that she will regret letting them go. "... are up for adoption?"

"Well, I mean, yeah." She shrugged, she didn't know why this called for an isolated conversation. The papers said it all: 'for adoption transfer'. "Sorry I got it mixed with my papers, alright? I'm not good with formalities." Was she going to get punished for a bunch of papers? Was that why? If she was, she was going to re-evaluate her joining this stupid institution, high pay be damned.

"It's not that, Mrs. Curtis," appeased Roy. "I'm curious if the boys get adopted, will that be alright with you?"

"Yeah, for sure!" she said, suddenly hopeful that the General might know someone who could provide a home for the Elrics sooner than she had anticipated. "Do you know someone? Because they're arriving in Central… hmm, at least a month from when I pass these and get them processed," she tapped the misplaced papers that started it all, "but I think it would be great for the boys to move with a family ready to take them in by then."

Riza subtly swallowed the lump in her throat. It was a shot in the dark but, she knew that from this point onward, she had to be the best she could be to set a good example for those boys and to make their country a better place to live in.

AN: Woooo! Chapter 4 of 23, y'all! This was more difficult to write than I anticipated because I personally relate more to Riza pre-reading the Elric files, like I can't imagine myself having kids for fear of messing them up.

Anyway, I have been on a Sofia Carson music trip for awhile, so… even if no one asked, I was only able to finish this chapter by endlessly looping her song "Ins and Outs". I know it's a love song but I felt like it fit (lol).

'Til next time!